A 40 year old animator-turned-teacher bootstrapped a $35 website into a $1.5 BILLION exit.

The crazy part?

She almost lost it all.

This is an amazing story 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ In 1982, Lynda Weinman taught herself computers on her boyfriend's Apple II.

She was trying to get Vertigo, a new wave and punk retail store, off the ground.

4 years in and it went nowhere.

She calls it the biggest failure of her life. But it did teach her one thing…
2/ How to do graphic design and automation on a computer.

Over the next 10 years, she worked as an animator and graphic design teacher as a divorced single mom.

As the internet came to be, she searched for a book on web design… and found nothing.

So she started writing…
3/ her vision was a non-technical guide to web design.

She labored over a proposal. She pitched scores of publishers.

They rejected it.

“No one will buy this”

Finally, A magazine agreed to give her a monthly column.

The column was a hit and she got her book deal…
4/ In 1996, she published “Designing Web Graphics.”

She received an email from a reader: Debbie@debbie.com

Lynda had been searching for a way to connect with her readers and love the idea if hername dot com.

Lynda dot com was born! It was a free resource for web design.
5/ Bruce (her husband) rented a computer lab and took out an ad for a week long class at the local school.

The class sold out, with people coming from as far as Asia!

The class turned into workshops and then into a whole school.

The 90s tech boom was in full swing…
6/ their biggest challenge was finding enough space in classes.

By 2000, the business did $3.5M in revenue with 35 employees.

Then it all imploded…
7/ first, the dotcom bubble burst and they saw revenues tank by 2001.

Just as thought it couldn’t get worse, 9/11 brought them to their knees.

The sold their house.
They broke classroom leases.
They laid off 25+ people.

They were barley surviving when Lynda had an idea…
8/ She recorded some videos and put up a $25 / month paywall for Lynda dot com.

Traffic dropped. People complained.

But then they started signing up… within a year, the site has 1000 subscribers.

Lynda kept the bar high by reviewing all the content made for the site.
9/ by 2006, Lynda had 100k subscribers!

They barely spent on marketing but 100xd by having the most in depth content.

They had FT instructors who also received a rev share. This skin in the game incented instructors to be the best.

20 video courses had become 267k tutorials
10/ As they saw sales explode, competitors and “Ed tech” finally started catching up to them.

Udemy, coursera, Edx etc raised tons of venture money.

after 17 years, they raised >$100M.

Lynda had more $ than she ever imagined.

Then something even bigger happened…
11/ LinkedIn called. Offering her billions.

She was only 60 and not looking to retire! Her first answer was no.

But her advisors, family and employees convinced her based on 1 thing: Impact.

LinkedIn could reach more people and more could learn from her creation…
12/ in 2015, LinkedIn Acquired Lynda dot com for $1.5BN.

The site and her content reaches tens of millions annually.

Last year, at 65, Lynda retired.
15/ Enjoy the legend of this Bootstrapped Giant?

Follow me @jspujji for more stories about bootstrapped giants, DTC, growth marketing and entrepreneurship!

Read this EPIC story of another early female founder/bootstrapper:
16/ why I love this story:

+ never give up but keep iterating

+ you can start at any age

+ being too early isn’t always a bad thing

+ know yourself, build the biz only you can build and know when it’s time to exit

And you don’t need a cs degree to do it…

• • •

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More from @jspujji

1 Aug
I do this every week to 2x my productivity…

The crazy part?

It only takes <1hr.

Improve your productivity by 100%+ 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ Every Sunday: Dedicate 1 hour to review your upcoming week's calendar and optimize it

• Target pruning 20% of the meetings.
• Move things forward or backward based on priority.
• Do a quick project round-up and list "next actions" for each
2/ Block out time to get specific things done. I recommend trying to keep half or whole days without meetings for deep work.

Make sure to mentally prepare and block prep time for important meetings. Email your team a reminder to ensure they are doing the same.
Read 6 tweets
30 Jul
A turkish immigrant used a commodity product to turn a $800,000 SBA loan into $10 BILLION.

This is an incredible story 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/Hamdi Ulukaya grew up in Erzincan, Turkey.

His family was Kurdish dairy farmers, sheep herders and feta cheese makers.

While studying political science, he started advocating for Kurdish rights.

Some of his other activist friends went missing…
2/Then one day, it was his turn.

He was brought in and questioned for hours by authorities.

Despite his pacifist approach, they sent a clear message.

He realized it was time for a different life…
Read 22 tweets
28 Jul
Last week, I asked for your favorite small productivity hacks

Today, I picked out 11 of my favorites to share🧵
1/ At 15sec, definitely the smallest hack to use
Read 14 tweets
26 Jul
Looks like a lot of you enjoyed the most recent Bootstrapped Giants thread!

"Common knowledge" says it takes money to make money.

So do most VCs.

But I LOVE the entrepreneurs who make $ from Day 1...

So here's 4 more Bootstrapped Giants, +1 of mine
1/ The thread that started it all.

It took 40 years to build, but she's continuing to dominate the market she made possible...
2/ Everyone knows this brand, but nobody remembers how quickly it spread.

A great case in building a high profit partnerships...
Read 7 tweets
23 Jul
Two mediocre students did everything wrong while taking $10,000 in credit card debt and turning it into a $67 BILLION company.

The crazy part?

They were profitable from day 1.

This is the wild story 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ Mike Cannon-Brookes met Scott Farquhar on their first day at the University of New South Wales in Sydney

Neither was a great student.

Farquhar averaged a 65%, while Cannon-Brooks barely graduated with a 53%

Mike sent a fateful email in 2001…
2/ in 2001, he emailed a few classmates that had been handling outsourced IT work with an idea: let’s start a company instead of a getting a “real job.”

Farquar was the only one to respond. They became co-CEOs.

… Atlassian was born.

But timing wasn’t great…
Read 19 tweets
21 Jul
I discovered one of the most interesting markets in the US.

Here are 3 facts about it + my most recent podcast which dives DEEP.

👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1) Pet ownership has more than TRIPLED since the 1970s!

Beyond that, covid saw another increase of 20-30% in pet ownership.

Today, over half of Americans own pets.
2) Annual spend per pet averages $1500… it was barely a few hundred dollars in the 1970s.

Some people admit to spending over $10k per year on their pet.
Read 6 tweets

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